British reality show rigs teens’ iPhones to record all their activity

If phones are monitored 13 hours a day, TV might actually have use for them.

A new reality series airing on Channel 4 used rigged iPhones to monitor all the digital activities of its teen characters, wrote the Columbia Journalism Review on Thursday. The system, referred to as a "digital rig" by the studio that developed it, had feeds monitored by a production team 13 hours a day, seven days a week.

The Secret Life of Students was a four-part documentary series meant to portray the lives of 12 freshmen as they navigated the first four months of college. In addition to filming the students, the production studio, Raw TV, also thought it would be a good idea to track the students' activity on their phones, including Internet search history, Twitter usage, texts, and phone calls.

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While the entire program, phone use included, seems to have fallen a little flat, it produced some interesting moments. "Is chlamydia permanent?" one subject searched on her phone after finding out during a phone call, which was also recorded on the rigged phones, that she might have contracted it from another subject .

The pop-up text bubbles in the show that were gleaned from the monitoring process may not have made for very compelling viewing in this reality show. But we've noted before the potential for parallel storytelling, as it has already been used in some TV shows and movies. Even if it didn't work for this particular group of students, the technology could be put to use in plenty of other contexts. The technology might also close a gap for scenario-based reality shows in general, which have customarily banned participants from staying connected in any way to the outside world.

Casey Johnston
Casey Johnston is the former Culture Editor at Ars Technica, and now does the occasional freelance story. She graduated from Columbia University with a degree in Applied Physics. Twitter@caseyjohnston